Sea Change by Francis Rowan

love to."
    No, no, no, he
thought. I don't have time for this. I've got to find out what the
hell is going on, who this man is who can do things no man should
be able to do, not make small talk with a grumpy man on his
sickbed. But he couldn't be rude to Alan, for Laura’s sake, so he
smiled and followed him up the twisting narrow stairs from the back
room of the bookshop, and onto the landing on the floor above. The
walls were all painted white. Alan opened the door at the far end
of the landing, and ushered John in.
    The room smelt
of age and illness. On the mantelpiece, above the dark iron fire
surround, a vase of lilies drooped towards their final moments,
elegant white curves turning into a sad helpless sag. On the far
side, opposite the window, an old man lay in a bed, paper-white
skin against paper-white cotton sheets. Although John had never
seen him before, he knew that the man was shrunken from the man
that he had been when he was younger, that like the lilies, he was
fading. A black cylinder like the one used to blow up helium
balloons stood beside the bed, and for a moment John had the
irrational thought that the old man was going to start speaking in
a Mickey Mouse voice, and despite everything, or maybe because of
everything, John felt that he was going to laugh. But he bit down
upon it, and in a moment or two it was gone.
    "Dad," Alan
said in a low voice, all his usual humour gone. "Dad?"
    The old man
opened his eyes. "I heard you the first time." His voice sounded
tired and very far away.
    "Dad, this is
John—I was telling you about him, you remember?"
    "I may be old,
I may be on my last legs but I'm not bloody senile. Of course I
remember. Laura's lad." Now there was more life in the voice, more
fire, and John saw that Alan heard it too because he smiled and
walked forward to the bed.
    "Let me help
you sit up," he said, and began pulling at pillows.
    "Bugger off,"
his father said, and Alan stepped back and watched the old man
perform a long series of manoeuvres and wriggles that moved him to
a sitting position. When he was finally comfortable, Alan pulled
the blankets up around him. His father's breathing had become
hoarse and irregular, and Alan stooped to the side of the bed and
picked up a clear tube that led to the cylinder. He fastened it to
his father's head so that the tube ran under his nose, and then
turned a knob on the cylinder. John could hear a distant rushing,
as if someone was hoovering a couple of rooms away.
    The old man
closed his eyes and just breathed for a moment. Then he opened his
eyes again, looked straight at John, who saw that Alan had
inherited his piercing blue eyes from his father. The old man
gestured to a chair that stood on the other side of the bed from
the oxygen cylinder.
    John walked
over and sat down, feeling awkward and self-conscious. This wasn't
helped by the old man, who simply stared at him as if he were
passing judgement. Then he waved at Alan. "If I didn't ask for a
pot of tea for the two of us, would you leave us here to die of
thirst?"
    "One pot of tea
coming up," Alan said, and again he smiled, and John knew that the
two men had held this conversation many times before, and that Alan
would remember it every time that he made tea in the future, even
when he was making it only for one.
    "You do drink
tea, don't you, not just that gut-rot sugary pop rubbish?" Again
the old man glared at John, who felt like a mouse felt when a hawk
spotted it amongst the tall grass. He nodded and said, “Please, Mr
Denby”, and from the old man's tone of voice John could tell that
not drinking tea was equivalent to spitting on the floor or
swearing in church.
    "Hmm. Don't
call me Mr. Denby, it's always buggers trying to sell me things who
call me Mr. Denby. Call me Charles. Never Charlie, or I'll jump
from my bed and throw you out of the house myself. Just Charles,
thank you, and we'll get along nicely."
    "Okay
Mr.—Charles."
    "And ignore
this thing." Charles waved a hand that